


The Peraltiago incident

by Alphawave



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Characters Writing Fanfiction, Comedy, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fanfiction of Fanfiction, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Humor, Inspired by Fanfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2020-03-07 22:26:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18882469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alphawave/pseuds/Alphawave
Summary: Charles's fanfiction is blowing up, and he wants Jake to read it. The thing is, 'Drake Peralta' and 'Jaime Santiago' are a little bit too similar to a certain couple Jake knows, but he's obligated to read it for Charles's sake.Why did Charles's fanfiction have to be so popular? And why did it have to have smut?





	The Peraltiago incident

**Author's Note:**

> _I had this random idea during a walk that Charles reads Peraltiago fanfiction, and then I figured "nah, he wouldn't just read it, he'd write it too" and then the absurd idea of Charles writing fanfiction blossomed into this fic. Enjoy!_

“Oh my god,” Charles said randomly from his desk. “Oh my god. Oh my god! It’s happened! I got 20,000 hits!”

Rosa, who happened to be near Charles’s desk, did not even blink. “Cool. I once got five separate hits out on me from three different crime families.”

“As always, Rosa is terrifyingly missing the point, but I am curious as to what you mean, Charles,” Jake said as he approached the desk. “What’s up?”

“My fanfic’s just passed 20,000 hits on AO3! I’m a celebrity!”

Amy, who had been beside Jake chatting about their respective day, looked at Charles with surprise and just the slightest hint of admiration. “I didn’t know you write, Charles.”

“Oh yeah, I do. I don’t think I’m that great, but it’s been a fun hobby. I didn’t think I’d get so many people to see my story though.” Charles excitedly turned his monitor around so people can see the story. Everybody leaned forward and squinted.

“ _’I would catch a grenade (for you)’’_ ” Jake read aloud. He wasn’t sure why the brackets were necessary, but he wasn’t a writer. He didn’t know if this was something you had to do. He looked at the blurb. “ _They said they hated each other, but no one could deny the sexual tension between Brooklyn’s two best detectives. When Drake Peralta and Jaime Santiago are forced to pose as a couple, they_ …did you write fanfiction about Ames and me?!”

“Charles, what the hell,” screeched Amy. She stole the mouse away from Charles and scrolled through, her face getting more and more pale with every single scroll of the moue. “27 chapters? 170,000 words? 200 comments?!”

Jake’s face also paled as he went through the comments with Amy. Things like _this was so hot_ and _I can just imagine what Peraltiago got up to in the bedroom_ flew through the screen. “What does ‘smut’ mean?”

“Oh that, that just meant they liked the sex scene I wrote,” Charles replied, peering at the computer screen. “That comment seems to be about chapter three.”

Jake goggled Charles. “You wrote PORN about us?!”

“The rating said E, Jake. Obviously, that means explicit.” Charles rolled his eyes, as if explaining to a child that the earth was round. 

Amy was still scrolling through the comments. “How many sex scenes are in this thing?”

“Every few chapters,” Charles laid back in his seat. “You know, when I first started writing smut, I didn’t know what to do. But then I told Genevieve what I wanted to write, and she wanted to help.” He smiled fondly at a picture of Genevieve by his desk. “She said it was a good idea to act it out, and it worked perfectly. One time, she handcuffed me to a chair and—”

“Please stop, I really really don’t want to hear about your sex life, ever, in my life,” Jake cringed.

“I wasn’t thinking about you guys when I wrote them. I was thinking about Genevieve and I.”

“THAT’S EVEN WORSE! HOW DO YOU NOT SEE THAT’S WORSE?!”

As always, Charles, as beautiful and wonderful a friend and comrade a man could be, was blind to what he did wrong once again.  

* * *

 

It had been a week after learning that there was a story written about his fictional sex life with Amy out there on the internet. Despite Jake and Amy’s best attempts, people found out about the ‘Peraltiago fanfiction’, as it was known, and began to read it. Rosa was the first in the office to read it, and was also the one who gave the vaguest response, giving Charles a thumbs up one day on her way to her desk. Terry read through all of chapter one and some of chapter two before stopping at the smut, after which he insisted Charles tell him where the smut was so he could avoid it. Every now and then he’d stare in Jake’s direction with a gaze that seemed to stare into his soul, and it was frankly unnerving.  Hitchcock and Scully also read it, purely for the smut scenes, but were fortunately idiotic enough to not equate ‘Drake Peralta’ and ‘Jaime Santiago’ to any real-world detectives they might know. 

Jake might feel a little bit better if the story was bad, or at least so wildly inaccurate that it made a very clear distinction between him and ‘Drake’, but unfortunately, everybody had said unanimously (to many an officer’s surprise) that the story was well written and enjoyable. Even Holt himself, who had only read a bit of the first chapter and admitted many months ago that he found the idea of free online reading content to be ‘trashy’, said Charles’s fanfiction was “adequate”, which was Holt speak for “I love it but I dare not admit it lest you all know how deep into the shallows I’ve gone”.

“Hey, Jake. I just updated the new chapter,” Charles said. “Because everybody’s spreading it through word of mouth, I’m getting way more viewers now! I’m almost up to 21,000. This is great!”

“Ha ha, that’s _great_ ,” Jake said through gritted teeth. Don’t get him wrong, he’s happy Charles found an audience for this sort of thing and is enjoying his hobby, but he’d been enduring weird looks and secretive giggles for an entire week. He could only wonder what it must be like for Amy downstairs.

“You’ve read it, right?” Charles asked excitedly.

“I…uh…sure?” A lie, and an obvious one at that, but one that Charles was too excited to notice.

“Really? What scene was your favourite?”

“Uhhhhh…”

“I mean, obviously I love the newest chapter because I just wrote it, but there’s something about chapter sixteen and that tender moment shared at the spa that I just love.”

“UHHHH….”

“—but then again, chapter four was pretty hot and steamy, even for me. Everybody seems to love that chapter for some reason. Or maybe chapter 9 when they brought out the vibrator and—”

“OK, Charles,” Jake paused, lips thinning as he wondered how he should proceed, “I… didn’t read your story.”

There was a moment of silence where Charles snapped out of his fantasy and stared at real-world Jake. “You didn’t?” He frowned.

Jake hated that disappointed note in his voice, but he couldn’t lie. “Look, I’m sorry for lying, it’s just kinda…weird that you’re writing stories about me and Ames.”

Charles shrugged. “I’m not the only one but go on.”

“Wait, there’s more people writing about me and Amy?”

Charles shrugged again.

“W-whatever, fine, I’m not saying I’m not happy for you, because I am, but I don’t want to read it because it’s…w-well, it’s me and Amy, man.”

“It’s fictional, Jake. I didn’t put any of your cases in. Your appearance and Drake’s appearance is way different.”

“Is he hotter than me?” Jake said knowingly.

“Well, it’s a fanfic, of course the fictional character’s hotter than the real person. Not that you can improve so much on perfection.”

“Nice save, Charles.”

Jake sighed, still a bit uncertain. Charles is smiling good-naturedly down on him, a puppy eager to please. It wasn’t fair, Jake muttered to his brain. Why did Charles have that puppy eye look down so perfectly? He wasn’t even a dog!

“Jake,” Charles said in a comforting little voice, and just like that Jake knew that he was instantly and thoroughly screwed. “I would love it if you read it, even just a little bit of it. You inspired me, and I wanna know what you think. If you really don’t like it, I can take it down.”

He figured Charles might decide to try publish it instead, or e-mail it to everybody, or even print it off and hand copies. Taking it down from the internet won’t mean it’s killed, and frankly that would be too harsh a plan. As for reading the fic in the first place…

“Fine,” he groaned. Charles let out a silent “yes” in victory. “I’ll read a little bit of it. Only a little.”

“That’s fine, amigo. Because that’s how you get hooked on the drug. The love drug.”

“What?” Jake spluttered.

 But Charles had already made his dramatic exit back to his desk, waving his hands and gyrating his torso in mystifying ways before sitting down. If Gina Linetti was here, she might have shed a tear of joy for seeing her influence reach out to others like Charles.

* * *

 

Jake had a good excuse to postpone reading Charles’s fanfiction for a while. He was busy with work, and when he wasn’t busy with work, he was busy with Amy. She had made the executive decision to order an IKEA bookshelf for Jake’s slowly growing book collection and had even made space right next to her bookshelf. They were of diametrically opposing colours, hers a creamy white and his a blazing orange. He had plans to spray paint some flames on the side but, as it turned out, neither of them were great at putting together furniture. Still, Jake continued to work on it, just for a chance to postpone the inevitable.

Unfortunately for him, Amy also decided that he was taking too long and made another executive decision to get some outside help. And who else was better at putting together tiny little screws and bolts into tiny little holes than the man with the daintiest fingers. Double unfortunately, that man had to be Charles.

Jake slurped his milkshake loudly as he watched Charles hammering away, masking the fright shooting up in his chest. Charles had turned his phone to speaker and was playing his playlist of Diane Keaton’s greatest hits. Currently, it was on her cover of ‘You don’t own me’ from The First Wives Club. The irony of the lyrics was not lost on him.

“Hey Jake,” Charles said as he assembled the first shelf, “did you read the story yet?”

“No,” Jake slurped his milkshake louder. “Didn’t have time.”

“Well, you got time now. This will take me a while, but it should be up in an hour.”

“I’ve got, uh, stuff…to do. Stuff like…laundry?” God, he was glad Amy wasn’t here.

“You’re doing laundry now?” Amy asked incredulously.

God damn it.

“Hey, Amy. I was just telling Jake to read my fanfic,” Charles called out.

Amy glanced at Jake incredulously. “You want Jake to read it?”

“Yeah! It’d be so great. You guys could read it together, ooh! Like a couple’s thing. Oh, I should write this down!”

“Just…concentrate on the shelf, buddy,” Jake said.

“Will do.”

Amy lead Jake into the bedroom, her eyes glittering with mirth. Her lips curled into a smirk, an act that was supposed to make him a little bit fearful but instead turned him on a little. Was he turned on by fear? Was this something he liked? His brain said no but his pants seemed to be leaning towards yes.

“Jake,” she said, “are you really going to read it?”

“Look, Charles came up to me and looked so sad and I…I said I would.” He looked into her eyes. “Did you read it?”

“A little bit,” Amy blushed, which told Jake enough about how much, or rather which chapters, Amy read.

“Am I the only one who’s kinda freaked out about this?”

“Jake, it’s just a story. Pretend it’s just…people that share your name.”

“It’s not like I’m inserting myself and pretending to be the hero. This is actually me, or a version of me, in a story. That’s a part of me. What if what Charles wrote turns out to be real? What if you see something in there about me I don’t like?”

“Jake, you’re overthinking it.”

“But it’s—” He had another argument ready, but Amy forced him to sit down at the edge of the bed. Her fingers dug into his shoulders, massaging slowly. It’s hard, not at all sexy, but it was soothing all the same. It almost felt like Amy was sucking up all his anxieties into herself. It would explain why she’s usually so high-strung all the time.

Amy exhaled quietly. “It’s just a story, Jake. Whether you like it or not, do it for Charles.” She turned to the door, where Charles was barely a few metres away. “He really cares about what you think about this.”

“Really?” He asked, even though he knew it was true. He let his head droop as Amy’s fingers dug into the meat on his shoulders, making him close his eyes and hiss.

“Really.” She suddenly smiled. “It’s not every day someone gets a book written about them. It's like having a biography made of you, right? The only difference is that this biography's only semi-accurate.”

“Semi-accurate?” Jake smiled back.

“Well, ‘Drake’ prefers Lethal Weapon, not Die hard.”

“Obviously different,” he laughed.

“And 'Jaime' has a stick up her ass.”

“Well, that one’s true.”

“Hey!” She playfully slapped him on the arm, earning another chuckle from Jake’s mouth that quickly turned into laughter. Together they laughed quietly, the two of them imagining the ridiculous ways Charles could interpret their personalities. If Jake thought about it on those terms, he might be able to slog through at least one chapter.

Seeing the tension dissipate away, Amy retreated back a step. Jake slipped his hands into his pockets and retrieved his phone. It might as well be now or never.

“The website’s archiveofourown.org, correct?”

Amy nodded. “You remember the story name?”

“I don’t think I can forget it.” He smiled brightly up to Amy, hoping that would be a suitable substitute for a kiss. “Thanks, Amy.”

Amy smiled softly back. “You’re welcome,” she said quietly. 

“ _Did you guys kiss yet_?” Charles’s voice rumbled from behind the door.

They stiffened for a second before Amy opened the bedroom door. A sheepish Charles smiled innocently at them.

“I’m sensing a lot of sexual energy in this room,” he said.

“Come on, man!” Amy threw up her hands.

“Yeah, come on, dude.”

With the bookshelf assembled and Amy escorting Charles out, Jake made his way to their joined study and sat down in one of the chairs. The scent of new furniture was still heavy in the air, but Jake didn’t mind. As the late afternoon light sifted through his New York apartment, Jake felt oddly at peace. Unlocking his phone, he searched for Charles’s story, his thumb hovering over the link. Panic rose up and was quickly quelled down. It was just a story, he reminded himself, one wrote in his honour. People only dreamed to have a book or film about them. It's like 'Bohemian Rhapsody' or 'Rocketman'. There's always going to be differences, no matter how similar it was. 

The door to the study opened and Amy came in carrying two mugs of coffee. Wordlessly she set one down next to Jake before heading to her desk and typing away. He took a sip, smiled warmly, and settled in his chair. He clicked on the link and the story opened up. He spent the time reading through it at his slow but comfortable pace, sipping his coffee every now and then as he let himself get absorbed into the story. 

* * *

 

“So, what’d you think?” Charles asked as soon as he saw Jake the next day.

Jake’s eyes were baggy and his movements were lethargic. All throughout the day and night, he convinced himself to keep going one more chapter, just one more. Approximately 170,000 words later at 3 am and Jake realised he had binged Charles’s fanfiction all in one go.

“It was…OK.” It was stupidly good. Why was Charles so stupidly good at writing?

“I knew you’d love it,” Charles grinned. “So, what was your favourite part?”

He could feel everybody looking at him now, Rosa, Terry, Hitchcock, and Scully. Suddenly he felt like he was in primary school again, waiting for the captain to pick him last for dodgeball once again.

“W-well…”

“Seeing you guys yesterday gave me this great idea for a new chapter. In it, Drake and Jaime are helping each other set up furniture for a friend’s house. They keep touching hands, the tension flies through the roof, I’m thinking _spicy_. I’m thinking _sexy_.”

He had to derail this conversation. “Uhhh…chapter five was OK. I kinda liked the little case they did about the dognapper.”

“Come on, Jake, don’t be shy, tell me which one you _really_ liked. You can tell me which one it was." He elbowed Jake playfully. "Was it the bath chapter? I bet it was the bath chapter.”

He had intended to skip the smutty chapters using the same list Terry was given, but he convinced himself to go back and read chapter two because key plot information in chapter three had been exposited in the previous chapter, even if said chapter contained sex. Then he did it with the latter chapters, and then for the rest of the story onward. When he read through all of Charles’s fanfiction, he read through _all_ of Charles’s fanfiction. The sex chapters were unfortunately well-written and completely in character, and with all the kinky stuff that happened, he had to keep wondering if maybe he or Amy were into that stuff after all. He planned to have that conversation with Amy later today. Regardless of how it'll go, the results should be _interesting._

Jake glanced to the right, lowering his voice. “Chapter 10,” he whispered.

“Really?” Charles scrunched his eyebrows in confusion. “That one was the one with the librarian costume, wasn’t it?”

“Y-Y-yeah yeah yeah, just…shush, OK? I don’t need anybody to hear it.”

“I didn’t know you had a librarian kink,” Charles said out loud.

At this moment, Holt had exited his office and was at the perfect hearing range to hear Charles’s comment. His face was blank as always, but as Jake turned to him, the image of wickedness flashed.

“Jake, please do not discuss your sexual fantasies about librarians in the office. It’s obscene.”

The rest of the office turned in Jake’s direction and smirked. If Jake could die of embarrassment, he would, and he’d bring Charles down with him so he could feel his shame.  

**Author's Note:**

> _After writing this I did a bit of background research and turns out there’s two fanfics called ‘I would catch a grenade for you’ without the brackets. One is for Glee and the other is for Mass Effect, of all things._
> 
>  
> 
> _So uh...if someone else writes a new fanfic in that name, it’s probably Charles. Just saying._


End file.
